I’m flying back to the United States. Just temporarily,¹ and just for the weekend, but it’s still filling me with a surprising amount of dread. Or maybe not so surprising, given current events. I just don’t want to go.

I spent the weekend playing Inside Hamlet, a very intense larp in Helsingør,² where you’re all members of the fascist regime of Claudius as it comes under threat from Hamlet from the inside and Communist uprisings from the outside.³ The characters are virtually all rotten, horrific examples of a ruling class unchallenged in their privilege until a prolonged siege and the steady dwindling of hope scrapes bare their illusions. Some retreat into decadence, some into madness, some into helplessness and indecision.⁴ It’s an emotionally wrenching journey which ends for almost everyone in death, killed by each other or — if you survived that minefield — gunned down by the Red Army which busts down the doors at the end.

And having been through this emotional meat-grinder, raw and vulnerable, you come back to the world to discover someone has slaughtered 11 people at a synagogue in Squirrel Hill.

It’s been a particularly contentious election season in the United States, led by the canker-sore-in-chief. You’ve had the President attack immigrants who are in the country legally as well as illegally, refugees, homosexuals, those who are transgender, Jews, liberals, Democrats, reporters, protesters, African-Americans, and dozens of other groups. His policy platforms come down to claiming some disenfranchised group is out to destroy America, and he’s the only one who can stop them. It’s an explicitly fascist appeal, backed by threats of arrest or grassroots violence,⁵ and a key part of a toxic ecosystem.

The other crucial half of this is an army of brownshirts, of radicalized men⁶ who hear this rhetoric as calls to action. They’re the ones marching in the streets with burning torches yelling “Jews will not displace us,” who show up to rallies with flagpoles as “protection” to stab protesters, who celebrate violent fights with protesters. And there’s always going to be a bleeding fringe of those who take it a step further, drive a car into a crowd of people, start constructing bombs to take out the opposition, or pick up an AR-15 and start researching churches in the area.

The term for this is “stochastic terrorism.” Person A with a microphone says the world would be a better place if it didn’t have people like those in Group X in it. Person B buys a gun and attacks members of Group X. Then Person A denies having anything to do with it, and laments the lack of decency on both sides.

This is the steady erosion of liberal democracy into an dictatorship. Whip the population into a frenzy. Attack the opposition, verbally and physically. When they fight back, declare the only way to stop the violence is to restrict protests and grant more powers to the police state. Restrict the free press, create your own propaganda arm to promote the official version of events, demonize the most vulnerable population until they’ve been driven underground, and then move on to the second-most vulnerable population and then the third and fourth and fifth until everyone left is either a true believer or cowed into submission.

I’m not claiming any of this is inevitable. Every step offers ways to fight, ways to win against those who would destroy democracy. But the longer it goes on, the greater the danger, and the fewer tools to fight against it you have.

I suppose every inveterate optimist and pessimist believes, deep down, they’re a realist. Humans are remarkably bad at keeping score. You remember all the times you were right more vividly than all the times you were wrong. And the path of history is only predicable in retrospect; history proves prophets more fools than visionaries. So take all these predictions with a grain of salt.

If I had to guess, at this point, I figure the Democrats take the House and the Republicans retain a razor-thin majority in the Senate. Even worse political gridlock follows and the battles flow to the courts, where the current administration’s efforts to pack the judiciary expand Presidential power to rule by executive order. In 2020, continued unpopularity and scandals allow the Democrats to take control of the Presidency and retain control of the House, potentially⁷ gaining a razor-thin majority in the Senate.

But I’ve seen nothing that really indicates the Democrats understand the real existential threat happening here, nor that they have gained any ability to present a clearly articulated vision of the stakes to the American people. Without that, they lose the House in 2022 and we’re back to the current state of affairs, with sane but milquetoast Democrats tepidly defending a global order that got us here going up against radical, illiberal Republicans whipping up nationalism as a means to power.

None of this is going to actually solve the deep problems besetting the body politic. America is trapped under a voting scheme that rewards underpopulated states over overpopulated ones. The courts have veered rightwards and are more explicitly political than ever, and cannot be relied upon to uphold the best instincts of liberal administrations nor curb the worst excesses of conservative ones. The increasing failures of globalism and the continued hoarding of wealth by the 1%⁸ will still provide fertile ground for reactionary politics and authoritarian leaders to scapegoat victims.

In the long run, we’ll get through it. But as Galbraith famously put it, in the long run, we are all dead.

However things turn out, it certainly seems like it’s going to get worse before it gets better. For every election which brings a silver lining — the right-wing in Sweden didn’t get nearly the share of the vote they might have; the Green Party in Hesse gained as many votes as the AfD — you have someone elected in Brazil who openly calls for the torture and murder of thousands of dissidents.

That means, if you’re still in the United States, you should expect more right-wing terror attacks, no matter who wins the election. If the Democrats do, you’ll see the every attempt to delegitimize the election by Fox News and the propaganda machine on the right. The US has a long tradition of violent insurrection, and “lone-wolf” attacks will be even more commonplace, from gay-bashing on the streets to the police assaulting non-violent protesters to gunmen targeting Democratic politicians. Our victories are going to be bought with our bodies and our blood, not that of our enemies.

I’m not sure what happens if the illiberal forces in the world continue to gain the upper hand. I left the United States because I didn’t want to find out. I do know whatever form it takes is unlikely to look like it did in the past. We’re going to have to figure out how to fight this, every single step of the way and, failing that, we’re going to have to figure out how to survive it.

And I’m terrified the people who have the deepest knowledge of how to do that are people like Judah Samet. He’s 80 years old. He survived the Holocaust. And he was late to services at the Tree of Life Congregation on October 28^th, where he sat in the parking lot and watched the shooting.

Next: Philadelphia (PHL) to London (LHR)
Prev: Basel (EAP) to Copenhagen (CPH)

Footnotes

¹ I have a prior engagement.

² Or Elsinore, as Shakespeare had it. Helsingør is the city, Kronborg is the castle.

³ This isn’t my favorite reading of Hamlet, but it’s not much of a stretch. One of the reasons Shakespeare is so well-regarded is the way he managed to layer so many different ways of interpreting the action into his plays. Hamlet can be feckless and indecisive, or a canny adversary playing a brilliant cat-and-mouse game. Claudius can be a blithe, evil power-hungry usurper or a decent man who committed one unforgivable act trying to save his kingdom. Gertrude can be a hedonistic, incestuous trollop or a good person trapped between love and duty. Etc, etc.

⁴ You might note that these reactions reflect, in one way or another, the main characters and conflicts in Hamlet.

⁵ It’s never “You’re going to be shot” but “I can’t believe decent Americans haven’t shot you yet.”

⁶ Noticed how it’s overwhelmingly men?

⁷ Although demographic shifts and the Electoral College over time make this increasingly unlikely.

⁸ Really the 0.01%, if we’re being honest.